3/365: A Day in Bed

Grand Budapest Hotel//cooking like a fiend//giving your characters something to do.

Fevered and there’s nothing to be done apart from sleep, read, watch The Grand Budapest Hotel. This time of year, you can keep your spartan minimalism, I want too much, I want opulence, I want the meal I had at the beginning of November where the cheese course came with port, claret, Sauternes and no need to choose between the three; and stacks of fruit piled high and butter so good it was nearly cheese (this is wrong, I know, but it was late, the meal was long, the wine, very good). Sure it’s January, but it’s not lent, I will not be giving things up, I want to succumb to all the things in the middle of so much darkness, and I do not want a film to look like life, although I often would like my life to look like a film, and especially just before Christmas, when I watched Fanny and Alexander again, which is the rule before Christmas, and my poor house ended up bedecked in bows, satin, velvet, fir cones and holly fresh from the woods, oranges studded with cloves and everywhere, candles. Fanny and Alexander nearly is nearly the too much I crave, but there’s still an undertone to the too muchness of it all, a slight hint of loathing, Bergman has that Lutherian edge, and cinematically Fanny and Alexander is an anomaly in his wider oeuvre, whereas watch Grand Budapest Hotel and you feel yourselves in the hands of a truly Catholic film maker, the opulence, the over the top, the too much, you could be in the finest Cathedral for the duration, and no self loathing either, no need when you can just repent. Or at least, this is how it feels watching it, full of pills and orange squash, slightly fevered but not sick enough to give it a name. By March, I’ll be back watching Godland, a spartan, Sisyphean film, full of guilt, totally lacking in joy: a beauty to behold.

Christmas Eve perhaps - time blurs as time does when there’s too much of it - when I watched Tran Anh Hung’s The Taste of Things. It’s not a stretch to say it ranks as one of the most beautiful films, whereas Anderson constantly veers close to and at times crosses the line between style over substance, The Taste of Things is beautiful because life is, not for a stylistic signature endeavour. Set largely in a working kitchen, in the first act the star of the film is food, the sound of it, the way it looks, the effort of preparing it; never has a film nearly smelt so good. It too fell into the too much this time of year demands, it made me remember how much I love cooking and how often I forget to do it. Since I watched it I’ve made latkes, cherry jam, cinnamon buns, challah bread, matzo balls, lemon mousse, mince pies, many pots of chicken soup, roasted birds and hams, given many iterations to sprouts, served cheese, fish, pate, soup from vegetables ailing at the bottom of the fridge drawer; I am beginning to crave spice, clear soups, light flavours, perhaps a trip to the fishermen is needed, fish fresh from the boat.

It felt good to be so physical during a time when we’re told to rest or hibernate or hunker-down or be cosy; maybe this too is Anderson’s strength, in being just that remove from reality, each of his films demands a certain level of physicality from the actors. This is something I’ve been thinking of a lot when I’ve been writing over the last year; a film is not just a story for the audience but a story for an actor to tell, drama is action, your characters need something to do, and your actors too, and acting is primarily a physical endeavour. Today has been lacking in all physicality, which is probably why I’m thinking of it. This fever has a deadline. By tomorrow it needs to be gone. I need my brain back.